Thursday, June 28, 2007

Laptops has been a fasionable gadgets nowadays. 10 years ago, lappie has been nothing but black and grey. How gloomy. And then Sony Vaio cheers all the technies with their colour series, Vaio FJ Series. And they boast their new trendy lappies with sky high prices, ~RM5980-6000. WTF!!! And it's undeniable, the colour series were very seducing (to me, especially the Blush Pink lappie). But WTF....with RM6000, I can tour a few Asian countries.

And now DELL, brilliantly came out with their own colour series, InspironTM 1520 and with 8 different colours with equivalent spec. And with their excellent customer service and reliability, and affordable(really!) price, everyone should get a DELL!!!!!

Price? Only RM3115 and deliver right to your doorstep.

Now beat that, Sony.

I definately will get that darling pink lappie. Wooooooohooooooooooooo......

We arrived, finally. And took a cab to our hotel, Balisani Padma at Legian.

Checked in and had our welcome drink.

Our room.

After settled down everything in our hotel room and a nice warm bath, we walk a short distance out to Legian street for our late dinner (9pm already). Lots of other hotels nearby and other foreigners walking around. About 5 mins walk, we saw a nice restaurant, La Monde.

Cheers! (Yes, it's welcome drink again)

What do they have here?

Yummy~~

Bali-style rice. Rice wearing hat? That's cute.

Beef steak for me. This was soooooooooooo delicious. And the price was darn cheap too. Rp40,000 for a steak that tasted so good.

Tee-hee

That's cool. ATM machine in a mini mart. Bali is really high-tech.

Not much on the first day because it was already quite late. So we went to sleep early and will explore Bali for the following 3 days.

Day 2 : 16/June/07Legian, KutaWe had a whole day to explore Bali. Woke up early at 9am (consider early because usually we will miss the morning breakfast if we stay at KL or Penang's hotel). I wonder how's Bali's hotel morning breakfast.

Balisani Padma's cafe. Very antique feel.

Someone trying to look cool.

I love the cinnamon in my coffee.

I always think Bahasia Indonesia sounds funny. It's not very different from our Bahasa though, but it's kinda hilarious but you still understand what it means.

Here's the pool view of our hotel.

At 10am, we took our hotel's bus shuttle to the town center of Kuta. Along the way, we saw so many shops and ppl trotting along the busy streets of Kuta and I can't wait to jump out from the bus to join them.

Walking towards to Kuta Beach. I'm so anxiousssss!!!!

Here's the beach. Where are the surf dudes?

Surf boards and body boards everywhere. Ready for rent.

Cowabunga dudeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We were so mesmerized by the beautiful beaches, came along two friendly local peddlars offering to do manicure/pedicure and hair braidings for us. We hesitated at first because the price they offered were too high. We walked away, and they shouted out for a much cheaper price. From Rp200,000 to Rp100,000. Such a huge difference. LOLed.

And so I gave it a shot and did a full manicure and pedicure. I'd never had any mani or pedi before...and doing it on the beach was so fun and different. Fai did something too....and he was grumbling alot because the pesky peddlars keep annoying him with different business and products they were selling. Massage, tattooing, selling handcrafts, and they even offer to do mani/pedi for him. LOLed.

Not bad...not bad at all.

And it feels pampering having one person doing mani and one person doing pedi for me and me doing nothing but enjoying the sea breeze. But the only turn off were, more and more pesky peddlars flocked. I was smart to not talk or look at them if I'm not interested but Fai kept talking to them and at the same time grumbling to me that they were annoying.

Anyway, despite that, I enjoyed my little mani and pedi very much.

It's all done. Yayy....

Lookie...it's not bad, Rp100,000 for both mani and pedi. The flowers were really tiny and pretty.

Look at what Fai did with his hair.

OMG!! And a tattoo too.

It's a semi-permanent tattoo. FYI, I did not get any temporary tattoo. If I want one, I want it for real. :)

After we'd had enough of the beach, we hire a private drivers to take us around Bali, mainly to Ubud and to the countryside of the island. Taxi drivers/personal drivers were everywhere, like vulgar looking for prey. Any price they offered can be bargain to half of it or maybe less. But we need a local ppl to take us around the island. Rp200,000-250,000 for 6-8 hours of their service.

Ubud is known as a village of arts and crafts.

Galuh art shop, Batu Bulan. We were suprise how beautiful an art shop could be.

Can you believe all these were actually in a shop?

We also went to Celuk, a silversmith village. But we did not capture anything from there because we're not interested in silver and gold crafts although it's a very beautiful fine art too. Then we head to Batuan, houses of painters. Each kampung house seems to be an art gallery. It's really fascinating to see so many great work from the humble local artists.

Local artist at work.

Galleria is their home.

We bought some paintings too. But not the one behind us.

Exhausted.

After Batuan, we went to Mas, center of wood crafter. Wood sculpture are even more tedious and beautiful.

Crafter at work.

Different wood sculpture from different wood.

Did you saw the woody dick? Haha...But we bought a barong mask instead.

Ubud is beautiful and with so many talents. It's seems like everyone in Ubud were born an artist, in someway, be it painter, wood crafting, egg painting, batik painting, silver/goldsmith, kite making.....too many to see them all in a day.And off we went for our lunch. Paddy field all along the way.

We make a stop at Padi Prada and had our lunch there. The restaurant is just right beside beds of paddy fields. Kin Fai being a half Kedah boy doesn't seem much fascinated with such view but it was totally breathtaking for me.

Bali's crispy duck rice. Why their rice always have to be like that?

After the sastifying meal, we went to Monkey Forest Padangtegal. What's so special about the Monkey Forest? We had one in Penang with angry monkeys. Well, the different is, it's really a huge forest here and it's sort of like jungle trekking. And the monkey are much more friendlier. There's so much to explore that we were provided a map in case we got lost. In the middle of the labyrinth forest, there's a few Balinese Hindu Temple. Kinda spooky....but with so many tourists around, it lost it's fear factor. But this is definately a good place to shoot a horror movie. I'm thinking Battle Royale III.

Exploring....

Baby monkey...cute eh.

The temple in the forest. It was closed from the public.

One happy family.

Guess what?

There's was a whole kampung of ppl parading along the street. I thought it was some sort of culture festive thingy....but it was actually a funeral. I stopped taking pictures after I realize they were actually carrying an open coffin. Two coffins to be exact.

After a whole afternoon touring Ubud, we went back to Kuta town. It took us 1.5 hours to travel back to town. Another thing not to forget about this day tour was the driver's driving skill, which was more terrifying and faster than any F1 drivers.

A memorial monument was build at Paddy's Pub site to honor the 202 victims killed in the first bomb incident in Bali. Second bombing area(2005) at Matahari Square is just 20 mins walk away. We heard drivers complaining that touristy business has slowed down and Bali used to be more crowded and happening before the bomb. But from what I see these few days, Bali is still very much intact and crowded with foreign tourists.

We had our Balinese dinner again. They always served in trays. Neat!

Something western for supper. I had a very very super duper delicious beef sandwich at Flying Piano.

And as usual, a big cup of welcome cocktail. Liquor must be darn cheap in Bali.

Western food are very(10 times very) delicious overthere in Bali. I really missed the beef steak at La Monde and the sandwiches at Flying Piano. We did not much activity but just walking around and eating around alot. And my colleagues said I gained weight from this trip. Sheesh....But their food were really cheap and tasty, every small corner shop cafe has no doubts in serving really yummy meals and in affordable price.